Everyone! Even the ones who had a terrible game which is most of them!

Shame of the Game:

There’s nothing shameful about winning the division. Normally I’d still give this one to the Phillies, but I’m in a good mood.

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The conclusion of this game was beautiful. It was the perfectly emotionally satisfying way to finish the Nats divisional quest. I would have it no other way.

Now, some might say that it would have been more satisfying to actually win a game at home to clinch the division. Wrong. That would have been fun but meaningless, just a 97th Curly W in a near-endless tangle of curls and u’s and victory.

This was so much better. This was the Phillies winning a game at Nationals Park and the crowd full of Nats fans cheering. The consummate act of condescension. Each triumphant clap seemed to say “aw, the wittle bittle phiwwies got a win. How cute! It’s nice that even total failures can have some small victories to keep them from just giving up on existence.” Continue reading →

Remember the first truly horrible thing to happen to you? That moment when your bubble of childhood innocence was shattered by the realization that your cousin Bart’s devotion to eating a gallon of Haagen Dasz a day was directly responsible for his premature death in the second grade?

Even if you never had a cousin who learned to roll because he could never learn to walk, you probably had such a moment—an inflection point in your life after which everything around you was just a little bit worse. And remember what you were told? “That’s life. . .bad things happen.”

What you weren’t told, however, is that sometimes bad things are written down. And sometimes, no one stops them from being printed. And sometimes, you read them.

It’s times like this that I wish I could trade places with Bart. Or at least banish Mark Judge’s “Bryce Harper, Conservative Hero” article into the kiddie pool we buried him in.

Amid tornadoes and thunderstorms, tonight’s game between the Nationals and Braves has been postponed to an occasion less likely to result in the Nats getting whisked away to Oz. Although that wouldn’t be so bad if they ended up meeting a cowardly Joba Chamberlain.

In spite of Atlanta’s scheduled starting pitcher’s name, I would be reluctant to describe the weather tonight as “Beach-y.”